Atlas Hands
by The Brat Prince
Summary: She is his heart and James is the rest of him; his pulse, his bones, all the things that make him strong, that keep him alive. Kendall/James as Finnick/Cinna from The Hunger Games
1. Atlas Hands

**Atlas Hands**

A/N: Alright, so obviously I've been writing a lot of Hunger Games crossover fic. After that last one, where Kendall and James ROLEPLAYED Cinna and Finnick, I was asked to write them AS Cinna and Finnick. This is the result. Enjoy. Warning for mentions of minor Jett/Kendall, Kendall/Camille, and really really minor James/Logan. **  
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* * *

The moon is waning over the bright city lights of the Capitol when Kendall wakes up. He shades his eyes from the glaring green, blue, and red glow of clock numbers and television remotes. It's been nine years, and he's still not used to the technological overload. Back home, the stars are his nightlights. He likes it that way.

Kendall stretches, long, lithe, naked. He kisses the shoulder of the boy lying next to him, mouth lingering against his scapula. The kid can't feel it. He is dead to the world.

Odd turn of phrase, that. Soon enough, he'll probably be dead for real. Or maybe not. Fate is capricious, and the guy has been training for this his whole life. He's a tribute from District Two, Jett something. He's strong. Not that strength means anything. It adds a competitive edge, sure, but between the harsh environment of the arena, the other tributes, and the whimsical nature of the Gamemakers, an edge doesn't help much. Still. Kendall thinks he'd hate to see this boy suffer.

When Jett approached him, he was arrogant, cocksure. He spewed insults from his pretty, insolent mouth, calling Kendall a _whore _and worse. But under the cover of darkness, he fell to pieces. He clutched Kendall close, held him dear. He was eager to please. During the second go of it, he let Kendall fuck him, needing someone else to take control. Kendall gets that. He's been there. He made it good for Jett, made sure that he nearly sobbed with it when he came.

This is the part they never show on camera, at least not until the end. It's like people forget that beneath the brave-face of the Careers, there are teenagers too. Lost. Scared. Desperate. Vulnerability is only expected in underdogs. Not giants. Not champions.

That's why Kendall didn't turn Jett down. He spends a lot of time hating his role in the Capitol, being a sex symbol, being a _whore_. But he doesn't mind splitting himself open if it means he can chase someone else's pain away. Even if that someone is a prickish bastard who will probably end up slaughtering the kids Kendall is supposed to be mentoring.

This year's cull doesn't have much of a chance anyway. The boy is a dreamer, head caught in the clouds. He seems to be holding onto the hope that he won't have to kill anyone, lost in old wives' tales about mermaids and miracles. The girl is a sneaky, weaseley thing who lets the tributes from One and Two boss her around. She's a ready, willing pawn.

Pawns nearly always die.

Kendall crawls from beneath the thick, soft comforter, standing on bare tile. It heats to sun-warm beneath his feet. The opulence is alien, unnecessary. The only thing that makes Kendall feel comfortable is the taste of salt water on his lips. Carefully, he begins the search for his clothes.

He does not want to wake Jett for purely selfish reasons. He promised the kid a whole night, sunset to sunrise, but the truth is that the dark makes him restless. His fingers twitch for a weapon. He finds his pants instead, stepping into them with a kind of effortless grace that he had to learn.

That's what no one knows; Kendall did not come pre-equipped with boyish charm or straightforward sophistication. They are skills that he's had to master, just like politics and making love. He stumbled too many times, never the best of students. But he's got it figured out now.

Kendall creeps out into the hall, towards the elevator that will take him to the fourth floor suites. Stealth isn't essential; everyone knows what Kendall Knight gets up to once the sun goes down. Everyone thinks that they know _him_. Even the white radiance of the elevator buttons judge him.

As the door slides closed, he jabs his index finger against one. He needs fresh air.

Not the fourth floor, then.

The roof spans the entirety of the training complex and the tribute apartments. Kendall knows the layout by heart. He spent hours up here back when he thought the sparkling cityscape was the last pretty thing he'd ever see. Since he came back from the Arena, mostly unscathed, he's spent a lot more time laying in the miniature garden, dirt beneath his fingers, the ghost of something that might be stars overhead. He's not big on the thick scent of freesia in his nose, but he likes the tinkle of the wind chimes some kindly gardener has set up, and this is essentially the closest thing they have to a beach.

He could go lie next to one of the grandiose fountains out there, but these days, every time he steps foot on Capitol pavement it's like he exists to create a spectacle. He doesn't much like crowds, and besides. Everything in this city is fake, right down to the dyed colors of the fountain water. It reminds him of the arena, where the flora and fauna were all mutated and grotesque.

Kendall presses his fingers into the hollows of his eyes, trying to black out the things he can't forget; misshapen, torn flesh, splashes of scarlet, the ivory of bone. Atrocities. Some of which he committed. He walks to the edge of the roof and breathes, sucks air down and holds it there.

"Deep thoughts?" It's a tease over his shoulder, hot air in the shell of his ear.

Kendall doesn't turn. He leans on the ledge of the roof, elbows scraping concrete. "You're up late."

"Logan," James explains, settling down on the ground, back to the Capitol. He doesn't like all the pomp and circumstance any more than Kendall. Then again, he's been fighting against it for his entire life.

"Ah. How is the boy on fire?"

"A handful." James smiles, affectionate.

It makes the corners of Kendall lips curve pull in. He glances down to get a top view of James's immaculately arranged hair, accusing, "You like him."

"He's a nice kid, underneath all that coal dust."

The thick ring of eyeliner James wears catches the moonlight, spreads gold straight across his sooty black lashes. Kendall's fingers curl into fists. "Have you fucked him yet?"

The James that people see on TV would wince. He'd give the cameras that prudish, puritan scowl that is equal parts scolding and embarrassment. The James that spends the day with Capitol lemmings would chuckle, polite but distant, and steer the topic towards calmer waters. This James, Kendall's James- maybe even the _real_ James, he dares to hope- laughs, full of self-deprecation.

"Have you stopped fucking Camille yet? How about the rest of the Capito-" his words bite off, strangled, because Kendall is yanking James to his feet by the roots of his hair.

"You don't get to talk about her."

James grins, pained, lurid. He doesn't look like the reserved, courteous stylist for District Twelve. He looks like the Wildman from District Thirteen, the one who found fifteen year old Kendall starting a drunken fist fight in one of the Capitol's manymanymany bars. The guy who helped Kendall beat the shit out of his opponent before the two of them had to run like hell.

Petty, alcohol inspired brawls happen all the time in the hallowed streets of Panem's lavish city center, but it's still better not to get caught. Especially when you're just another victor from a backwater District, barely wearing the crown long enough to possess a reputation. Back then, Kendall's entourage still joked that he smelled of salmon and the brackish sea. But James looked at him like he was a _hero_.

That night was streaked through with champagne bubbles and starlight and bootlegged music chips stolen straight off a train from District Three. Kendall lost his virginity to James in the shell of a sparsely decorated apartment. He fell all over himself to satisfy this kid who was barely his age, but who seemed like he knew more about living than all the other guys Kendall knew; at least the ones who hadn't been in the arena. It was only in the harsh light of day that Kendall found out it had all been orchestrated for his benefit. James was trying to recruit him for something bigger, better.

Something they've been waiting to put into motion ever since.

And they became…well. Kendall's never sure. He was hurt, at first, when he figured out James was using him. But. He got over his childish grudge years ago. He has spent days training in the depths of District Thirteen, side by side with this man. He has spent nights tangled in James's warmth, wondering if he is merely a tool or something more. Allies? Friends?

Lovers?

It is the first time Kendall has ever been forced to interact with James in the midst of the Games, the new job assigning his friend a kind of status and prestige James didn't warrant from Capitol society when he was just some kid in design school. Kendall doesn't know how to act or react or not act. Worse, they've barely seen each other since before the Reapings, James swept up in stylist things that Kendall doesn't care to understand, Kendall occupied by life. And since they've stepped foot in the Capitol, they've never been alone. Kendall has his friends from District Four, the other Victors who traveled in for moral support. James has got his team, a trio of girls with big mouths and bizarre fashion sense. And they've both got admirers.

So this, the ragged breath, the angry eyes; this has been their first real meeting since maybe Harvest, when the last Victory Tour was in full swing and Kendall could slip into the Capitol unnoticed. It's going so wonderfully.

James says, "So you don't get to talk about Logan, then."

His eyes spark with fire, the same fire he made stupid Logan Mitchell famous with. It catches in Kendall's gaze, reflects flames back at James, burning, wild. "He's going to die, you know. You've made him a target."

James shrugs. "Don't count him out."

His scalp is turning white from the places where Kendall is pulling. Reluctantly, he lets go, letting James stand up to his full height. He's got a few inches on Kendall. It's annoying. He says, "I can't believe you. That kid, the other tribute from Twelve- Garcia?- is always making cow eyes at Mitchell. And here you are, banging his brains out behind the scenes."

James strokes a finger down the slope of Kendall's nose, tapping the end. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were jealous."

"I'm not," Kendall retorts, but he's not sure if it's true. Is this what jealousy is like? He's slept with so many people he's lost count, but he's never cared if they had other partners.

This is new.

Unwanted.

Unjustifiable, even, because James is right. Kendall has his one true love; _Camille_. Poor, mad Camille, who Kendall just couldn't save. She is his heart.

They grew up together on the shores of District Four, side by side in the sunlight until the day Kendall's life as he knew it ended. He came back from The Hunger Games changed inside, but a few years later the Games cut Camille a thousand times deeper. They broke her in a way that would make Kendall want to start a rebellion, if he wasn't already at the core of one.

When she manages a smile these days, it makes Kendall remember why he puts up with this farce. Why he sluts around the obscene Capitol crowd and doomed tributes. Why he agreed to gather recon for Thirteen in the first place. One day, he wants a better world for her.

He is not sure what he wants for James. Only that it probably is not a boy on fire. "I don't get jealous."

James flinches. He rearranges his expression, nimble, the same way his fingers work over the handsome suits he parades his tributes around in. "I know." After a pause, to catch his breath, or maybe compose his voice, he asks seriously, "Who was the lucky recipient of Kendall Knight's charms tonight?"

Kendall hesitates to answer. The people back at Thirteen don't like it when he fools around with tributes. He's supposed to limit his attention to the higher ups in the machine, people the President himself confides in. Reluctant, he confesses, "Jett Something."

James's lips thin.

"The tribute from Two?" Kendall nods. "And what secrets did he have to tell? His last words?"

It's vicious, the way James says it. Mean. Unlike him. "Stop."

"Why?" James demands, his voice getting louder, too loud. The wind chimes cannot drown him out. "I think you like this job too much. You bend over for anyone who asks."

Kendall only means to shut him up. That's all the kiss is. But the next thing he knows, he has James's jaw caught between his tight grip, James's tongue playing filthy against his own, their hips fitted close. Seconds or minutes or hours pass like that, crushed together, too near, but not near enough.

Kendall mumbles into his mouth, wrecked, "It's your fault I'm like this. You made me this way."

James agrees, pants, "I'm _sorry_," and sounds like he actually means it. Like maybe the things Kendall has to do shatter James inside.

That is too much to hope for.

Kendall lets James take him over the ledge on the roof, the city shimmering beneath them. They're rushed, a little frantic, a kind of raw that Kendall doesn't go through with anyone else. No one but James has ever made him want this much.

Pants shoved down around their ankles, he and James talk better with their hips than they ever have out loud.

James sucks apologies into the notches of Kendall's spine, familiar with what will ease the tension in his muscles, too knowledgeable about what will make him fall apart. He licks into Kendall's hairline, marks his throat red and blue. Kendall fucks back against him, twining their fingers, kissing his jaw where it rests on his shoulder. He gets intimate with so many people, but it only ever feels real with James and Camille, his first and god willing, one day, his last. She is his heart and James the rest of him, his pulse, his bones, all the things that make him strong, that keep him alive.

He can feel James go deep, the head of him wethot_there_. In a rush of breath James murmurs, "It's you, IloveyouKendall, you're_it_," and it brings Kendall off, just like it's supposed to, cum splashing down to sizzle on the roof's force field. James is inside him, still pulsing, his forehead sweaty against Kendall's shoulder. Kendall tries to help James ride it out, kisses soft against the places he can reach, like his nose, his cheek, his eyelid.

He wonders if his lips come away gold.

James collapses against him like they are back at Thirteen, on the training field, comrades in arms. There they found that he cannot handle a trident as skillfully as Kendall, but he can wield Kendall better than any weapon. That has not changed. Kendall doesn't have much energy left, but James falls to his knees, tongues him loose and open, each wet flick reviving his dick, making him want to feel James hard and visceral, like the first time.

It is Kendall's turn to want to be owned, and this is the only circumstance in which he is okay with that feeling. James is not Capitol-trash. James _knows_ him. He sucks all the air from the night sky, gathers black and silver around his shoulders and devours the whole universe with his eyes. He is the only thing Kendall can see when they rut in the dirt, feral as animals, powerful as gods. The muscles in James's thighs work as he works himself into Kendall, never quite repetitive, biting on the flesh of Kendall's lower lip.

His orgasm hits him harder, this time, balls tight and overused. Cum drizzles down the side of his dick, a tiny pool on his stomach that smears between him and James.

"You're beautiful," James whispers like a secret, driving himself home in short stutters of his hips. He adds, "Kiss me."

Kendall does. He tangles his arms around James's neck and draws him in, uses his legs too. James comes with Kendall's tongue fucking his mouth, his entire body shuddering while Kendall wraps him in his long, pale limbs as though they are tentacles.

When they finally separate, Kendall has to snark, "Better than Logan?"

James won't rise to the bait. He presses a chaste kiss to Kendall's mouth. "You know it was."

Kendall doesn't know anything of the sort, but he pastes on a confident smile all the same. "We should get going. Early morning. Interviews tomorrow, you know."

The problem is, he does not want to leave James. There is a reason for that.

It is something Kendall doesn't like to admit.

"Let's go." James is in Kendall's role, gathering his clothes while Kendall watches from his place in the dirt. He is smeared with the stuff, like he has lived through a wild Bacchanal.

Kendall likes to watch, likes the shape of James's muscles beneath his skin and the simple elegance in the way his fingers move over his shirt. He has tried copying James before, his style, his posture, his class. It never works. He feels positively provincial in the midst of his own dressing routine.

But James pauses, midway through buckling his pants. He says, "Kendall. You know…I'm here if you want me."

Kendall can hear all the unspoken ifs that follow that phrase.

If he leaves Camille.

If he stops playing honey pot to Capitol bigwigs.

If they run away, because that's what they'd have to do.

They won't. They're in too deep. And the truth is, neither of them is really willing to quit.

In the elevator, Kendall tries to inhale all of the air from James's lungs, to push it deep inside himself while they kiss. They reach the top floor of the complex all too soon, and his last glimpse of James for the night is the broad span of his shoulders. He calls, "I'll see you tomorrow."

He does not say good luck, because James will not need it. His hands create magic, even with some small town hick from District Twelve. There is a twinge in his chest. After the doors slide closed, Kendall presses his fingers to his mouth. Is that coal dust he tastes, there, ingrained in the whorls and edges of his skin?

He doesn't let himself think about it. The fourth floor rises to meet him, or he sinks to greet it, but either way he is there. Kendall climbs into bed and curls around Camille.

She breathes soft, gentle, barely there. She feels insubstantial, like she might disappear. He loves her so much. But. This is the reason he did not want James to go. Since he was fourteen years old, the only time Kendall has ever come close to feeling safe is when he's around James.

Kendall can't help wishing that it was his body filling up all the space in his bed.


	2. Make It Gold

**Make It Gold**

* * *

The first time James fucks Kendall, Kendall is a virgin. He trembles beneath James's fingertips. He sings a song so sweet and ruined that it sounds like nothing James has ever heard before. And when Kendall comes, he clings to James's body like it is an anchor, like the feel of James buried inside him is the only thing keeping him grounded.

It makes James think of the story of a girl who chose to dissolve into spume rather than destroy the person she loved. The idea of Kendall dissolving is an ache beneath James's ribcage, in places he thought had long since been swallowed by darkness. He aches and aches and aches because, in this moment, James realizes what he's done.

He wants to take it back, to rewind time, to undo the callous way he's taken advantage of this poor, fucked up, beautiful kid who has already been through much too much. Kendall's fingers fist in the sheets, his blond hair sweat-sticky against his forehead. He gazes up at James with implicit trust, the champagne hazy light turning his green, green eyes the color of sea foam and sunlight.

It is too late to take it back.

Kendall tangles his hands in James's hair, and James loathes that, barely ever lets anyone get away with it, but this is Kendall. The idol-boy James watched with baited breath as he mercilessly killed his fellow Tributes in the last Games. The tragic-boy James has seen slowly fall to pieces over the course of his Victory Tour, regret hanging like a cloak from his shoulders. The shining-boy he found in the midst of a bar fight, ready to take out his anger on the world. James has hated, pitied, and admired Kendall with equal measure from afar.

Up close, he adores him more than he'd known was possible, from the bruise blossoming across his cheekbone to the curl of his toes. He thought using Kendall would be easy. He was so very wrong.

James tries to soften the blow that Kendall does not know is coming. He wraps his arms tight around Kendall's middle and brings them both off again, gentler this time. He soaks in the way Kendall whimpers his name. He revels in the scent of his skin. James lets himself dissolve into the unfathomable depths of those gorgeous green eyes and he tries to forget.

The ache does not go away.

James was not a virgin when he signed on to seduce Kendall. That ship sailed a long time before he met the impish Victor from District Four. Of course, it was only natural that James hadn't waited. He was raised in a cage, like an exotic animal. He grew up knowing an all-consuming thirst for revenge, and by all rights, it's all he ever should have known.

Color was his salvation. Despite the iron in his heart, James had had fire in his head. He could mold the pretty, pale gold of dawn into a tangible form. He could turn sunset into a dress and twilight into a suit. He had _talent_, where the rest of Thirteen's soldiers only had rage. His District was quick to take advantage. They trained James up and shipped him straight off to the Capitol.

It wasn't freedom; merely trading up for gilded captivity. James hated the pomp and circumstance of his new city the way he was supposed to. Before he was an artist, he was a soldier. These were the very people he was meant to crush.

But James did not hate the _color_. It was everywhere, in rich, brilliant hues. It danced in vivid patterns across the faces of Capitol citizens. It sparkled across the sculptures in the square, miracles in metallurgy. James was so used to gray-brown-tan, to home. He did not understand how a place so evil could spawn the rainbow of variegation that existed everywhere he looked.

He never lacked for inspiration.

James also did not hate the sex. In Thirteen, his encounters with intimacy were rushed, the desperate teenage fumbling of kids who did not know if they would make it through their next sunrise. Here, in the Capitol, making love was an art form. James subjected himself to a skilled pool of instructors, male and female, just to be _thorough_.

He found he had a knack for it. Like fashion, sex was one more talent he'd nearly left undiscovered.

James is the one who figured out how loose-lipped the Capitol lemmings become when they are satisfied. He is the one who realized that it could be used as a weapon.

He'd heard rumors of Tributes from the Games who were bullied into prostitution. For the longest time, James thought they really were just that; rumors, fabricated by his flighty design school friends as a scandalous way to pass the time. As they say, scandal is _everything_, darling. But as James rose in esteem, he discovered it was true. On the eve of his graduation, a pretty girl from District One bent over backwards to blow him in the library. She was a gift from James's new employers, celebrating his potential.

She is the piece that made the puzzle click into place. The Capitol likes sex and the Capitol likes Victors. And there is no Victor who holds more sway over their hearts or their _parts_ than the freshly crowned Kendall Knight. He arches in James's arms, sunshine and the sea in the shape of a boy.

A man, now. James has made him a man.

The least he can do is give Kendall one good night before he snatches it all away.

* * *

The last time that James fucks Kendall, neither of them is pure.

It's James's fault. He destroyed Kendall, and then he remade him, because that is what he does. James builds from ashes. Kendall did not like being a tool, but he gave into it, eventually. He knew that the President would approach him. It was only a matter of time. This way, at least, he could help the cause.

The cause. The rebellion. James hates all the words he is supposed to associate with this uprising they are trying to bring about. It has made him into an oppressor, into the very thing he despises.

He took Kendall back to District Thirteen during the off season. He taught him to fight like a soldier instead of a fishmonger's son. Kendall knew brute strength, but he did not yet understand strategy or stealth. It was hard to show him how not to shine.

The next lesson was worse. James taught Kendall to fuck like an artist, to draw out each touch, to let his gaze linger. _Take your time_, he'd warn when Kendall would whine, desperate against him. It wasn't always easy, keeping it together when James felt like falling apart. With each passing day, Kendall became a current that James could not escape, stronger than a riptide. The harder James fell for him, the more Kendall pulled away.

Now every time Kendall walks into a room, James wonders who has put their hands all over him.

"It's not so bad," Kendall says, reading James's mind while he unfastens his pants. He kisses him, tender in a way that his words aren't. "I don't think about you anymore. When I come."

James winces and takes it like the insult that it is meant to be. Kendall knows how he feels. Sort of. He thinks that James couldn't help himself; he is Pygmalion and Kendall is Galatea. He's half right. James cannot deny that he has sculpted Kendall into the man he needed, cautiously, and with great care. What Kendall does not know is how much James regrets it.

There was a night, before Kendall found out that he was a tool. James took him out in the mountains, to a lake that was the broadest and vastest he could find. They swam beneath the starlight, sparkling wet and silver and exactly where Kendall belonged. He slipped under the surface of the water for minutes on end. He would pop out like the champagne corks that resounded the night they met, throwing his arms around James's shoulders, laughing endlessly.

James knew then that he was screwed. He did not want to take the wild boy- kelpie-quick, daring as a dolphin- and cast him in shadows. He would have rather painted Kendall in sunshine and allowed him to bask in it like a seal on a rock. Together, the both of them could be free.

It didn't make a difference, in the long run. James would not allow himself to covet the Victor he hand-picked. He followed through with his betrayal, aware that it was a mistake. Only later did he understand how large his error had been. How every slice of envy and pang of yearning and bruised hurt represented bigger stakes. The label for it eluded him as the months stretched on, but he figured out eventually.

He'd never been in love before.

Still. James does not blame Kendall for loving someone else. Because he does love someone else. James isn't sure how it happened. One day Kendall was the Capitol slut, and the next he was the doting betrothed of crazy Camille, a pretty little Tribute in an endless parade of them. Maybe Kendall always loved her, and James ignored it because he didn't want to see. It is one thing to fight against the tide of consorts that mill around Kendall every second of every day.

It is another to combat a broken girl who is lovelier than a man like James could ever be.

Kendall grinds back against him now, like a professional, like a tease. He treats James like a client instead of someone that means more.

Does he mean more? He's never certain.

"No tricks," James begs into his throat, biting, sucking. "Not tonight."

Tonight is the last night they have. Kendall will be going back into the arena tomorrow. He will be one step closer to danger than James has ever wanted him. And in the light of day, James will not be able to stand by his favorite Victor. He has to be with Logan, the boy they are all trying to protect, the boy James lit on fire.

James wants Logan to live, yes, most definitely. He is passionate about the boys that he created; the fire that rages out of control and the deluge he can't ever stop.

But Kendall has sworn to die for Logan, if necessary, and that James cannot stand.

He also cannot tell him _no_. Kendall wouldn't listen if he tried.

James pumps into him, slow, and Kendall does not tremble. He does not sing, no matter how much James works for it. And when he comes, Kendall grips the side of the rooftop, his nails digging into hard concrete. He has changed, where James has not.

Kendall still calls to him like the sea, like the crash of waves and the thunder of ocean, bluegreenturquoise and salt on his lips. James tells him, "Survive."

"You too. I can't believe you pulled that stunt with the tuxedo," Kendall says. James thinks of his mockingjay suit and smiles. Kendall tugs at the corners of James's lips, trying to chase it away. His green, green eyes cut like a trident. "Don't look so happy about it, idiot. I'm going to worry about you both. I'll go insane."

"I'll watch over Camille."

"Watch over yourself. It'll be enough," Kendall retorts.

James wants to tell Kendall that he is loved, but he's only ever been able to say the words in the midst of sex, where he knows they won't be rejected. He begins, "When you come back-"

"If."

"_When_ you come back," James barrels on, because knowing that Kendall could die and accepting it are two very, very different things. "I want to see the ocean."

"Really?" Kendall perks up.

"Really." James kisses him again, unable to help himself. Kendall may belong to a million different Capitol citizens, to a girl with feral eyes, but he was James's first. James will always be his first.

"We'll go," Kendall promises, confident in a way that he was not seconds before. "I'll miss you."

He lets James's mouth move over his, and if this is to be their last kiss, James decides that he will make it count. He breathes straight from Kendall's lungs until he cannot stand it any longer, until his throat burns and his head spins and his legs have gone weak beneath him.

Kendall is the one who pulls back, who says goodbye. He has to run off to his mad girl, to sing her sweetly to sleep the way he has not for James in so very long. James stares out at the glittering lights of the Capitol and tells himself that it is okay. They'll see each other again. They have a date at the ocean in a few weeks' time.

He does not have to wonder what their reunion will be like. James can see it now, playing out in his head. Kendall will pop out of the sea like the champagne corks that echoed the night they met, throwing his arms around James's shoulders, laughing endlessly beneath blue, blue skies. He'll kiss James like they've never been apart.

All the pain and betrayal and blood they have fostered will make the taste of salt between their lips that much sweeter. James might even work up the courage to say something real, to finally apologize, or more. Together, they will crash through the surface of the waves.

Beneath the surface, they will dissipate, turned to sea foam in each other's arms.


End file.
